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Summary: Best book ever!
Review: Ok, ok, you're probably thinking that I'm kidding, but I'm not. I read this book almost three years ago when I was 14 and it is still one of my favorites. Usually I am the more serious reader and I thought that these books would be totally trashy but they aren't at all. This and Petals On The Wind are my favorites but I've read ever Andrews novel. They are so addictive. Once you read one you will never be able to stop. I love Cathy, Chris, Corrie, and Carrie. Read this book!
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Summary: Still my favourite book...
Review: I first read this book when I was twelve. My mother pulled pulled it out of her closet with trepidation (much to my pleading) and must have forgotten the incestuous relations within. Needless to say, I fell in love.Ten years later I decided to pick up another copy, my original long since missing. All the tears and angst were mine once again
as I re-read this beautiful, haunting tale of 4 children locked away for two and some odd years by their own mother. For those who haven't yet...please read this story! It's a story that will sit in the dark recess of your mind forever!
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Summary: A great book for reading
Review: Flowers in the Attic is a great book that will keep you on your edge. Although this was the first book that I have read by V.C. Andrews, it took me by surprise. It will make you fall in love with reading even if it is your first time. The book covers a mixture of feelings. It is a drama and suspenseful. It is also filled with betrayal, lies, deceit, greed, child abuse, sorrow and emotional. This book will make you shed a tear for the children having to hide away from the outside world, fresh air and sunlight. Fill you with angry to hear a mother risking the lives of her own children for a little money. The children's grandmother Olivia is an evil, diabolical and cruel woman. She wears only gray and treats the children like animals, referring to them as the "devils spawn." Flowers in the Attic is a powerful book. It deals with child abuse and teaches you a lesson on how precious and innocent our children are. I would encourage everyone to read this book.
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Summary: A very good book,except..........................
Review: This is the first book in the Dollangher series.I loved this as a movie but the book is quite different.I've watched the movie a hundred times, but i just read the series recently and i had no idea about what happened between chris and cathy(which i think is disgusting no matter how long they were stuck together)but besides that this was a good book and I would recommend it to anyone.
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Summary: The Book That Will Start an Obsession!
Review: When I first read V.C. Andrews, I felt like I was guilty of reading crimes. I'm usually a Shakespearian-Great Gastby-Jane Austin serious reader. But don't judge this book by it's reputation! Andrews(not the terrible, iditoic, unoriginal GW) captures the totured and haunted youth of Cathy, Chris, Carrie and Cory with such masterfullness, if you aren't crying, you should be dead. I personally do not feel that the Chris-Cathy angle is perverted, it is the most hauntingly bittersweet aspects of the book. If you read this (I finished it in a day), you have to go on to Petals and Thorns, though Seeds does make this great series lose some of it's luster.
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Summary: flowers in the attic series
Review: I read these books in high school in 1980 and I couldn't wait for the next new book to come out. I was mesmerized while reading them. Could not put them down.
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Summary: There is a time for everything---a time to die
Review: I think I've read enough reviews on this book that reek with bias, so I will try to be as truthful as possible. If you really want to know whether or not you should read this book, you're going to have to ignore a lot of what others have had to say. This book seems to invoke some really strong feelings in people, which leads to wild exaggerations of the characters, the situations, the writing, whether the comments are negative or positive. I personally thought that this whole series was very good, however, if you are disturbed easily, you should skip it. And I don't think that anyone younger than, say, sixteen, should read this. But perhaps it depends on the kid.
First of all, the incest. If you are bothered by such topics, don't read the book. It's funny how people so easily dismiss "Flowers" due to scenes which they call "gross" or "disgusting" because whatever happened to having an open mind and bringing a mature outlook to what you read and watch? This book was not written to give the reader a "comfortable" feeling. It's incredibly easy to create likeable characters who have normal, healthy relationships, with the exception of the occasional heartbreak. I have a deep appreciation for writers who can create tormented characters who do outrageous, insane and despicable things but can still evoke sympathy from the reader. It's not enough to just create flawed human beings, which any author can do. You also have to make the reader care what happens to them, and deep down, even if you detest what they do and the choices they make, still like them a little bit. I believe that the real V.C. Andrews was good at doing this. As for questioning whether or not a brother and sister could actually fall in love with each other when they are cramped together 24/7, everyone responds to situations differently and there is no way you can eliminate what certain people are capable of doing under certain circumstances, especially if they have been so abused. And unless you have spent three years in an attic with your brothers and sisters, you really can't know much about what could happen. However, I do agree that it's trashy to put incest in every one of V.C. Andrews' series, but it is the ghostwriter who is really responsible for beating that dead horse.
The characterizations. I admit the characters weren't great, but they were a million times better than the characters you see in average popular fiction. The characters were kind of stereotypical in FITA, but they were taken to the extreme, which made them unique as well as interesting. Later on in the series, there are some really complex characters that I found fascinating. The characters in this book develop more as the series continues. Also, the dialogue may be unrealistic, but the emotions are genuine, I feel, and expressing these emotions accurately is more important than making the dialogue authentic. Besides, it is fun to read language that is different from the kind you hear in everyday conversations.
Now I know that some feel that you should just stick to a classic instead, perhaps something by Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters. For example, Bronte's Wuthering Heights, which I've read is kind of similar to FITA. Actually, the Dollanganger saga is probably more like Jude the Obscure. But anyone who is really well-read understands that all any story is is a different way of looking at an earlier one. All Shakespeare did was borrow from the greek myths (Romeo and Juliet vs. Pyramus and Thisbe). And the great Greek authors never had an original plot line in their heads. They just expanded on stories that already existed and everyone knew (and these stories include incest too, so blame the source of the problem.) That doesn't make their stories any less worthy, though.
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Summary: Very addictive
Review: Ironic as this may seem, I started reading this book in my grandmother's attic. I was bored and the title caught my attention. I kept reading it until my eyes could not stand it any longer. After that book I was hooked and ended up reading the whole series. I loved them all but I think "Flowers in the Attic" was by far, the best one.
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Summary: WOW!!!!
Review: I LOVE this book... The whole saga is grate but this one is, by far THE BEST. I couln't stop reading, it's so involving. I've read it 4 times all ready and I still get the same feeling everytime I pick it up again... WOW!!!
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Summary: Arsenic and "Attic Mice"
Review: This is an outstanding novel. If Stephen King said it was bad writing, he's probably just jealous. This book may not be great literature, but it's an amazing story nonetheless. And I disagree with all the people who say that it would have been better with the incest taken out. I found that that was essential to the horror of FITA, and it turned the characters into flawed humans. And by the end of the book, the narrator's future looks promising and the reader is left believing that perhaps she and her brother will become better and stronger people because of what they went through (think of the famous quote "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger"). Young kids shouldn't read this book, though. I don't know what the appropriate age group would be. Perhaps fourteen at the youngest. As for this being a true story, as far as I know, it was never proven that it was. I read that V.C. Andrews used some real life events in her book, but she never disclosed which parts were based on truth.
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